It's impossible to write about the role of readers' editors in the past year without touching on the extraordinary drama that has been unfolding at the Royal Courts of Justice. The Leveson inquiry has lifted the lid on the culture, ethics and practices of the British press in a way that has never been seen before. Self-regulation has been found wanting, and it will be up to the inquiry to recommend a fresh approach.

As a board member of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (and now president for a second term), I wrote a witness statement for the inquiry, outlining the job that readers' editors do all around the world and repeating editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger's call for the inquiry to recommend more appointments in other major newspapers in Britain. The Guardian's Chris Elliott appeared in person, answering questions about his role and how his independence is guaranteed.

We must wait to see whether Lord Justice Leveson agrees that newspapers could become more accountable if they appointed independent figures to listen and respond to readers' concerns, but a look at my workload and that of my Guardian colleagues would suggest that this is a fertile and positive way to show that a newspaper cares about ethical behaviour, accuracy and transparency.

Here's just one example of an ethical dilemma. If a newspaper sets out to expose blatant exploitation, will it risk colluding in the very exploitation it is determined to reveal?

The Observer ran a double-page spread on the plight of the reclusive Jarawa people of the Andaman Islands. The tribe, just 403-strong, lives in a jungle reserve that is supposedly protected. A trunk road runs through the reserve, and while photography and human interaction are forbidden, police were accused of accepting bribes to encourage half-naked young women to dance for convoys of tourists and their video cameras.

An undercover Observer reporter joined a "tour" and saw people throwing biscuits and bananas at the Jarawa "as they would to animals in a safari park".

To illustrate his story, he obtained a video of the forced dancing from a tour operator. After the girls' faces had been obscured by our web team and the policeman's instructions translated and subtitled, it ran on the paper's website and quickly attracted more than 500,000 hits, making it the second most viewed item that week. But some readers considered that to use the illicit video was to join in the very exploitation that the story set out to condemn.

The paper came under sustained attack for apparently endorsing a questionable treatment for cancer. It ran a first-person piece by a relative of a four-year-old girl whose family had chosen the treatment in a Texas clinic after her condition was considered inoperable in Britain.

While the piece acknowledged that the procedure was unproven, regrettably it did not include any of the concern for the treatment shown by the medical profession. This was a mistake, but the article did not set out to be a discussion of the treatment or an endorsement. Its focus was on the huge public campaign to raise money to support the family's desperate desire to find a way to extend their daughter's life.

Another piece that certainly strayed into the area of unquestioning endorsement appeared on the science pages. An inventor was allowed to make astonishing claims about the effectiveness of his adhesive tape which supposedly helps athletes recover from injury. Unchallenged, he claimed it would ease pain in fish and flamingos, mend chihuahuas and prop up sagging dachshunds.

The piece, which appeared under the label "Sports medicine", dispensed with all vestige of scientific inquiry at the outset with a headline that trumpeted "The magic tape that aids injured muscles", supported by an unequivocal subheading: "Kinesio tape provides pain relief for sports stars. And it works on dogs, says Dr Kenzo Kase".

I agreed with readers that such puffery had no place on a science page. They pointed out that Kase's bona fides were further brought into question by this remark in the piece: "The reason we get jet lag is because we are at very high altitude and that causes our temperatures to go up. So the first thing I do after flying is jump into cold water, even during winter. That brings my body temperature down and I don't have jet lag." As one reader put it: "So all we need to avoid jet lag is to fly lower in a cold plane. Nothing to do with changing time zones, then."

Other concerns raised by readers in 4,000 email exchanges, about 100 snail-mail letters and countless telephone calls included the Magazine's nomination of footballer Wayne Rooney as "Crush of the Week".

"This is a man who allegedly paid for sex while his wife was pregnant with their son," wrote a reader. "I was shocked and appalled when I read that Mr Rooney had 'leapt to the top of [your] "would list" and I would like an explanation as to what kind of message the Observer Magazine thinks this is giving to women (and men for that matter) in terms of their aspirations as far as respectful and loving relationships are concerned."

The Magazine responded: "If we banished every unfaithful public figure then we might have empty pages. But more pertinently, as a liberal paper we are not censorious."

Again, the problem here was one of apparent endorsement. It's fine to comment on the lifestyles and love affairs of celebrities (in moderation), but it's not so fine to claim they have won the heart of the paper – and, by extension, the readers – when some will have understandable and profound objections to their glorification.

In an example of misrepresentation, a headline announced "Nine out of 10 doctors oppose NHS bill" nover a news story that said: "A new poll reveals that nine out 10 members of the Royal College of Physicians – hospital doctors – want the NHS shake-up to be scrapped."

But a closer examination of this "poll" revealed it wasn't a poll at all, but a self-selecting open-access survey; a campaign tool created by and linked from callonyourcollege.blogspot.com, a website set up to fight the health bill.

The Observer decided the survey showed "that 92.5% of RCP members want the Health and Social Care Bill withdrawn", while in fact what it showed was that 92.5% of those who decided to respond wanted the bill withdrawn – something entirely different.